Typically, healthcare insurance provides coverage for both current maladies as well as preventative healthcare to mitigate future healthcare issues for which individuals may be predisposed. Predisposition to disease may be due to a variety of risk factors such as genetics, lifestyles, behaviors and/or environmental influences. Unfortunately, healthcare insurance is expensive and not everyone can afford to obtain coverage. However, for many individuals obtaining healthcare insurance is a matter of choice and some of these individuals are not inclined to incur the expense for what they may consider an intangible benefit.
For example, there is a strong temptation to forgo healthcare insurance among young adults who typically do not suffer from any serious maladies in order to maximize current disposable income. As a result, these individuals will also be more likely to defer or forego obtaining necessary preventative healthcare, as the entire expense of obtaining the preventative healthcare is perceived as an “optional” expense rather than an investment in their future health and wellbeing.
Unfortunately, the decision by these individuals to forego obtaining healthcare insurance, and thus often also foregoing recommended preventative healthcare, is typically made without full awareness and/or careful consideration of the future economic, personal, and/or family consequences resulting from the lack of receiving the recommended preventive healthcare.
As noted above, one reason for this “impromptu” decision-making is that the perceived benefit seems remote, in terms of both time and probability. In addition, the difficulty in obtaining, interpreting and comparing each individual's personal health history with statistical measures associated with those of the general population further complicates the situation. Consequently, there currently is no simple mechanism to consolidate, analyze and output the results in an easily understandable format so that these individuals can see the projected tangible results of their choices so they can make an informed decision regarding their healthcare insurance and/or utilization of preventative healthcare.
As a result of the above situation, many individuals defer obtaining, or otherwise fail to obtain, recommended preventative healthcare early on in life because they are never given the tools to properly analyze the situation. Consequently, many of these individuals will experience higher overall healthcare costs, reduced quality of life/disability, and/or reduced longevity.